Realistic Radio Schedules

[LizzieMaine]

I've seen them performed at the Friends of Old Time Radio convention, and the quality varies wildly -- usually it's a mix of veteran actors and amateurs, and it's being done more for the entertainment of the live audience than any attempt to actually recreate the experience of a real broadcast. Particularly, there's often, either subconscious or conscious, an "ironic, campy" attitude on the part of some of the performers that sets my teeth on edge.

I've heard some of the modern "audio theatre" productions as well, and while many of these deserve high marks for effort, I think there's a tendency in too many of them toward overproduction. So much time is lavished on sound effects that they forget the importance of a good, well-acted script. I really don't need to hear every tick of the clock in the room, or every rustle of the leading lady's petticoats -- but what I *do* need is actors who know how to sell a story thru their voices alone. That talent, unfortunately, is very rare nowadays.

 

[dhermann1]

It's all in the voices, isn't it?

 

[plain old dave]

WDVX is trying to revive the Mid Day Merry Go Round with a program they call "The Blue Plate Special". The Mid Day Merry Go Round was a Golden Era Knoxville program that featured talent as diverse as Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe, Homer and Jethro and in later years was the start of the career of a Sevier County girl y'all might have of heard of: Dolly Parton. People say you could walk down dirt roads in rural East TN and not miss a song the whole time the show was on in the 30s and 40s.

here's a link: http://www.wbir.com/life/programming/local/liveatfive/story.aspx?storyid=34477

And of course you have to have The Farm And Home Hour first thing in the morning...

 

[The Reno Kid]

I've seen them performed at the Friends of Old Time Radio convention, and the quality varies wildly -- usually it's a mix of veteran actors and amateurs, and it's being done more for the entertainment of the live audience than any attempt to actually recreate the experience of a real broadcast. Particularly, there's often, either subconscious or conscious, an "ironic, campy" attitude on the part of some of the performers that sets my teeth on edge.

I've heard some of the modern "audio theatre" productions as well, and while many of these deserve high marks for effort, I think there's a tendency in too many of them toward overproduction. So much time is lavished on sound effects that they forget the importance of a good, well-acted script. I really don't need to hear every tick of the clock in the room, or every rustle of the leading lady's petticoats -- but what I *do* need is actors who know how to sell a story thru their voices alone. That talent, unfortunately, is very rare nowadays.

I've noticed the same thing. A few years ago, my wife got me a set of cassettes containing a series of OTR-like mysteries with a hero named "Brick Mallory" or something like that. They were painful. I suppose the creators were trying to be funny but they barely managed sad. I kept visualizing the lead in this mess posing for the microphone. Blech!

Also, I watched The Radioland Murders recently (or part of it, anyway). It was produced and written by George Lucas of all people. Absolutely awful. I don't know "whodunit" and I don't care. It was full of pretty sets, hammy acting, and not much else. There was certainly no storyline that I could detect. I have a DVD copy of Up in the Air (1940) starring Mantan Moreland and Frankie Darro (who you might recognize as a street urchin from a zillion B-movies from the 30s). It was also set in a radio station. While not a great movie by any standard, it was enjoyable hour +. It was certainly lots better than the above-mentioned George Lucas product. Maybe it was because the actors/crew weren't so self-conscious about what they were doing.

 

[Fletch]

For various reasons - chief among them probably that it's too old to be pop culture and too trivial to be history - OTR is obviously thought of by the entertainment tastemakers as somewhere beyond lame, that is, when it's thought of at all. Radio Days and Remember WENN were about the best efforts at redoing it, and even they were agonizingly cutesy at times, like a flashback in an episode of Golden Girls.